


The Fisher King

by Notinthisfandom (orphan_account)



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Arthurian, Crossover, Mythology - Freeform, Prompt Fic, are mythology crossovers a thing?, i guess, not actually fanfic, okay? okay, so if it isn't a thing i'm making it a thing, the fisher king, they did it in supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:18:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Notinthisfandom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Fisher King looks out over the end of the world as he knows it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fisher King

**Author's Note:**

> My friend and I gave each other prompts intended to take the other one out of our creative comfort zones. My story ended up as a mess of legend and mythology because that's just what happened and I am certainly not in my creative comfort zone. Some wanton Norse mythology/literary/music references if you know where to look. Heavy in metaphor, symbolism, and suggestion.  
> Prompts: tranquility, bridges, water, clarity.  
> Unbeta'd. Fun fact I do not like this one.

The sea god called to the Fisher King. She whispered him tales from the great beyond, of the A geaen, of the Great Serpent and of his ancestor’s longboats and their heathen gods of thunder and ice. She filled him with the Sailor’s Regret - a kind of dripping fear that comes from the life mislived. It leaks from those who should have known the sea but never met the river gods. He reasoned that the fault was not his, that he was stuck to the coast in his lead boots. His people would follow him wherever he wished to go but he could not move of his own accord. He was shackled to the land by boot and duty. That was his ill; his wound was his throne. His father, the Wounded King had left, carried by servants to his own personal holy land and left the home coast to be watched over by The Fisher King.

Tides were a funny thing, the Fisher King thought to himself. Rise and fall to be tied to the return of the prodigal father so. It is said that the A geaen shall drift out with the fall of an empire and rise at dawn of new, taking with it all that the broken empire had left behind. It is said that when the empire falls the father of the land should leave his prince to keep vigil over the coast while he himself searched for his successor. The stationary wanderers - the Broken, the army of the damned, looking for direction lost - of the land were said to join the Fisher King’s vigil to see the tides come to take the old world. It was said to rival Ragnarok in it’s brutality. It was said the waves would be as high as mountains, and the mountains themselves would fall.

In the beginning the Fisher King had tried to escape his fate, sending his father’s faithful admiral, to find some magician from a far off land to lift him from his sand prison but the sea could not be crossed - A geaen, the sea bridge, had fallen. Eventually, his faith in Perceval proved misguided and after much argument, he resigned himself to his fate as watchmen of the the Broken, and began trying to accept mortality. As the weeks turned into months, he stood, solitary, pondering.

Some people, he thought, seek the desert to find Nirvana, others the forest. Some require solitude, others thrive in Hanoi’s lunch-time rush. Some are the eye within the storm, others are the storm within the eye. His father found his peace gods only know where, and he found his in miles and years of waiting.

He found a strange peace in knowing it would be a violent end. It would be violent but it would be swift. He sensed, while Perceval joined his inharmonious guard with banal conversation, the first of the Broken dredging through the muddy banks of the sea. The Wounded King would be returning. He could hear what Sophocles heard long ago, long before he saw the sea begin to rise but he could not turn to look at his subjects.

Perceval was quiet, unusually so. But then, he didn’t suppose that Perceval had considered the rising water taking them as thoroughly as he had. “Tell me, Perceval, are The Broken with us?”

But Perceval was silent, for his tongue was stolen by the sea. His cruel mistress lay before him, deep, wide, and utterly enchanting and he wondered how many tongues she had claimed to her infinite seduction. The god of the sea was indeed as cruel as the cliche presumed. She would cradle you, rock you to sleep, steal your heart, and slit your throat if given half a chance. Perceval pondered how many of The Broken, if any, had even seen her before, much less tasted her freedom or weathered her breast. None he wagered. He wagered, too, that their Fisher King had neither inclination nor ability to find what he dreamed of in anything past his quicksand boots.

The river gods would find their banks blessed by the end of this day, Perceval thought. The new age would ride over them on his mistress’ back in great wooden traitors, like the Carthaginians of old atop their war elephants to conquer Egypt. He turned inland to look upon the incoming horde of lost souls. So many. So many Broken expecting their end in a flurry of furious gods of water. He assumed most would flee to the mountains but it seemed as if the whole country stood on the shore. He nodded to the Fisher King, turning back to find a fine line of blue on the horizon.

“So it begins,” muttered the Fisher King.

The Broken running masses lying on their bellies, waiting for the flood found it didn’t come in the literal sense of the crashing wave. No, instead it came in the gentle rising tide and boots stuck in quicksand. The broken watched as the water rose and were by no means calmed by the rising damp. What they insisted would bring peace instead brought with its creeping finality, the Sailor’s Regret.

As the water rose the Broken understood what the Fisher King had long known - nothing will float when weighted with lead. Not in the least an empire, and an empire is in it’s very nature a lead balloon. They understood that it would never last forever, and understood that to float one must have clear skies lest you capsize. The Fisher King wonders if his lead boots have sunk his ships.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm deeply sorry.


End file.
